


The Lonely Moments Just Get Lonelier

by quicksilverclizzy (quicksilvermalec), quicksilverdeancas (quicksilvermalec), quicksilverjimon (quicksilvermalec), quicksilvermalec



Series: Quicksilver Soulmate AUs [4]
Category: The Shadowhunter Chronicles - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Everybody is gay, Fluff, Jace & Magnus & Clary friendship, M/M, Simon died, Soulmate AU, enjoy, remember that?, with the pendants
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-30
Updated: 2019-05-30
Packaged: 2020-03-27 15:02:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19015288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quicksilvermalec/pseuds/quicksilverclizzy, https://archiveofourown.org/users/quicksilvermalec/pseuds/quicksilverdeancas, https://archiveofourown.org/users/quicksilvermalec/pseuds/quicksilverjimon, https://archiveofourown.org/users/quicksilvermalec/pseuds/quicksilvermalec
Summary: He knew what that meant - hell, how could he not? Everyone over the age of 8 knew what it meant when one's pendant broke.His soulmate was dead.





	The Lonely Moments Just Get Lonelier

**Author's Note:**

> THIS WAS ALREADY WRITTEN! I just had to type it up! Yay!

It was so painful.

It was all he could think about. It was the only thing in his head. The pain was so intense that it found its way into every corner of his mind and blocked out all other thought. In the middle of training, Jace had just doubled over, collapsing in unimaginable agony, and then Alec and Izzy were there next to him.

He could see Alec's face and the way he flinched every once in a while, a physical manifestation, proof that he was feeling bits and pieces of Jace's pain. But not all of it. Not the rush, the flood, the torrent.

Now Jace was laying on his bed beside Alec, trying to ignore the torture in his lower stomach and the sinking knowledge of what was happening to him. There were only two things in the Shadow World that could cause this kind of pain, and since Alec was right beside him...

He didn't want to look at it. Alec was there, and he'd never shown it to anybody, including his  _parabatai_. But he needed to see. He had to confirm.

With trembling hands, he grasped as the fine chain around his neck and slowly pulled his pendant out of his shirt. It was a platinum circle with a hole in the center - an irregular seven-pointed star, like a comic book explosion. Jace almost smiled at the thought, at the way it reminded him of his massively inescapable crush on Simon, the adorable, clueless mundane Clary had dragged into the Shadow World after her, with all of his nerdy references ad the way he called Jace 'Captain America' as if it were an insult.

But he couldn't quite bring himself to - smile, that is - because his pendant was no longer whole. It was cracked, cleanly down the middle with a perfect vertical line, splitting it almost into two pieces. Cleaved in half. He could feel Alec staring, his gaze burning into Jace's hand, and Jace was staring too, because he knew what that meant - hell, how could he not? Everyone over the age of 8 knew what it meant when one's pendant broke.

He stared at it numbly.

His soulmate was dead.

***

Years later, Jace was no longer crushing on Simon. He'd long since moved beyond that... into full-on, heartwrenching  _love_. Izzy and Alec weren't altogether kind about Jace's soulmate dilemma. Izzy tended to assert that he had, "a bad case of love with a side of unrequited" which naturally made Jace feel just  _spectacular_ about it and caused him to be indisposed ever to mention Simon to her. Alec, on the other hand, was always pushing him to just ask him out, which Jace was not ready to do.

Needless to say, he didn't often go to his siblings for guy advice. Instead he went to his  _parabatai's_ boyfriend and his prospective boyfriend's  _parabatai_ \- Clary and Magnus.

By this point, Simon Lewis was Simon Lovelace, a Shadowhunter, and a pretty damn good one. Jace felt awful for him. He'd literally been through hell. He'd been pinballed from race to race - mundie to vampire to Daylighter then back to mundie and now to Shadowhunter. Jace just wanted him to be happy being where and what he was, andd right now, that meant a Shadowhunter at the New York Institute.

Jace had once thought that maybe, since his soulmate was gone, he could be happy with Simon. But Simon had a soulmate. That much, Jace knew. So he would settle for Simon's happiness.

These were the feelings that landed him in Magnus and Alec's loft apartment one day, magically-conjured beer in hand, Clary on his right and the warlock himself on his left.

Clary listened to him explain all of those things, and when he was done, sighed and set down her wine. "Jace, there's... something else. Something you've been dancing around for months, maybe longer. Maybe if you told us what it was, we could help you."

"Or maybe you'd just pity me," Jace muttered. He paused for a moment, then made an impulse decision. "Can I see your pendants?" he asked. Magnus smiled amicably and handed his over immediately, his deep purple square fitting perfectly around Alec's silver crescent. Jace had always known that they were meant for each other. Clary was slightly more reluctant, but gave hers to Jace anyway. It was an orange octagon missing one wedge that was - to Jace's great surprise - filled with a black triangle. Jace pulled the triangle out and examined it. "Izzy?" he asked disbelievingly. "My sister is your soulmate?"

Clary's cheeks burned as red as her hair and she cleared her throat and hastily changed the subject. "So what about you? If you know who your soulmate is then why are you so hung up on Simon?"

Jace's face fell as he whispered, "I  _don't_ know who my soulmate is. And I never will." He dipped his hand into his shirt and pulled the circle out, laying it on his palm for the both of them to see.

"My soulmate died," he explained. "Four years ago." His voice was shaky; he could hear it wavering. "I- I felt it happen." Quiet, guilt-ridden, and broken. "It was absolute agony." With a perverse sadness that emanated from him in waves. "And all I could think was that  _this is what it would feel like to lose Alec_." He let out a long breath. "I know that it's not the same thing, losing your  _parabatai_ isn't quite that painful, but it's all I could compare it to. It's impossible to decide which is worse - there's a different emotional grief that comes from each one. When your  _parabatai_ dies, you're losing a person you've known and loved since long before you took the oaths. You're losing a part of yourself that seems completely irremovable until it's gone. But when you lose a soulmate you've never met, you don't ever get to know what it's like to be complete. You spend your time wondering what you're missing out on. I am condemned to spend the rest of my life wandering aimlessly, trying to find something that can fill the gaping hole where my other half should be. And nothing can."

He exhaled shudderingly. "And- by the Angel, even back then I was so happy with Simon, but he was still pining madly after Clary and it's not like I can say anything now. I just-" he choked off, swallowed, and continued, much more quietly. "Now I have something real, a best friend like Alec can't always be for me, and hell will freeze over before I jeopardize that by telling him I'm in love with him."

Clary and Magnus were silent.

After a while, Jace stood up. "I have to go. I'll see you back at the Institute."

***

"Simon," Clary said into the phone, "do you know who your soulmate is?"

A pause.

"By the Angel," she whispered. "Simon... talk to him. Go- go to him. He doesn't know, he doesn't- what? Yeah. Um... Izzy. Sorry? Why? Yeah. Okay. Please, he needs you. Just go. Bye."

***

Jace didn't look up when Simon entered his room (primarily because he wasn't aware that Simon had entered his room). He had a cushioned swivel chair facing his bed and he was draped across the two with his ankles crossed on top of the back of the chair, staring at the ceiling.

He shot up in full ready-for-combat mode when he felt the dip in the bed next to him, but he relaxed back down when he realized who was visiting him.

"Hey," he muttered.

"Uh... Jace?" Simon asked hesitantly.

"That's my name don't wear it out," he murmured tonelessly. He didn't have the energy. He was putting exactly 0 effort into his jibes.

"Can I- can I see your soulmate pendant?" the brunet requested. Jace handed it to him. At this point, he didn't care.

Simon looked down at it, then took a deep breath. "I used to think Clary was my soulmate because I felt this odd, inexplicable pull to her. I thought it meant... I don't know. But I'd seen her pendant, and it didn't match my own. That first day that she introduced me to the world, right from 'is this your drug dealer', the pull disappeared. It's taken me this long to realize that that pull was because she was the one who would  _lead_ me to my soulmate. I figured out her connection to Isabelle and got them together. And you and I started to become friends, once I stopped hating you and I... I realized."

Jace's face was vulnerable and his voice a whisper as he tentatively asked, "who's your soulmate?"

Simon was clenching his fist so hard his knuckles were turning white, but then he opened his fingers, held his hand palm-up toward Jace, who recoiled and sucked in his breath involuntarily.

"I am."

In the center of Jace's suddenly whole white circle was a golden starburst - Simon's pendant.

"But- how?" he asked. "My pendant broke, my soulmate died!"

"I died. Remember? You buried me yourself. I just ended up coming back."

Jace stared at him. "You're my soulmate. You're really my soulmate."

Simon grinned. "I really am. I love you."

"I love you- I love you too!"

When their lips connected, it was closer to magic than anything Jace had ever seen in the Shadow World.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'M NOT AN UNPRODUCTIVE FAILURE! I AM GOOD AT LIKE, ONE WHOLE THING!!!!
> 
> I'm also very tired, so apologies.
> 
> Title taken from 'House of Memories' by Panic! At the Disco.
> 
> Love,  
> -Sil


End file.
